


Maybe the Real Treasure is the Ghosts We Busted Along the Way

by Masu_Trout



Category: Pokemon GO
Genre: Established Relationship, Ghosts, Other, Rivalry, Team Fluff, ToT: Monster Mash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-29
Updated: 2016-10-29
Packaged: 2018-08-27 19:11:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8413306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Masu_Trout/pseuds/Masu_Trout
Summary: "Sorry if this is a weird question, but… how many meowth do you have in your apartment right now?”
Some days you wake up with a kitchen full of adorable pokémon. Others, you realize your bedroom is being haunted by ghosts.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [xhorhas](https://archiveofourown.org/users/xhorhas/gifts).



The phone was ringing. Candela blearily opened her eyes and blinked at the clock on her dresser. It was a simple model, without a backlit screen, but her sleeping flareon's fur cast just enough light to see by.

3:32 AM.

 _Ugh_. She let her head flop against back against her pillow for a moment, seriously debating rolling over and shoving a pillow over her head. Was it too much to ask for a single night without something going horribly wepear-shaped? Two days ago a massive flock of pidgey had escaped Willow's lab and sent them all on a merry chase through the city, the day before that a migrating charizard had landed in the middle of downtown and very nearly set the library on fire (and, for that matter, very nearly caused a stampede what with all the rookie trainers desperate to catch it)…

But Candela had never been under any illusions about the life of a team leader—sleep was less important than keeping the people who counted on her safe.

She pulled her cell phone to her ear and fumbled for the call button. “Whazzit?”

“Hey,” Spark said. He didn't sound panicked, at least, which meant nothing _too_ urgent could be happening. If anything, he just sounded really confused. “Um. Candela. Sorry if this is a weird question, but… how many meowth do you have in your apartment right now?”

“ _What?_ ” Candela asked, suddenly much more awake. Her flareon startled out of his sleep at the sound of her voice. “Spark, I swear, if this is some kind of prank call, I am going to take _every single one of your gyms_ —”

“It's not!” Spark snapped back. “I wish it was. I have”—there was a pause, and in the sudden absence of Spark's voice Candela could hear the faint sound of what almost sounded like purring—“at least eighteen meowth in my kitchen. Maybe more, they keep moving and I can't count them all.”

A clattering sound and a caterwauling screech echoed across the line, so loud Candela had to pull the phone away from her ear. 

“Wait, make that nineteen,” Spark said. “Gleam just found another one hiding on top of my fridge.”

“But… meowth?” Candela asked. “They're not common pokémon, there's no reason you should have so many. Did you put out any weird lures?” It would be just like one of Professor Willow's creations to malfunction in such an _unusual_ way.

“Unless takeout Hoenn food is a lure now, no. I just woke up fifteen minutes ago covered in fur.”

Candela snorted. “So pretty much—”

“So pretty much like normal, then,” Spark said in a rush. There was a moment of silence, then: “Ha! Beat you to it. And anyway, Volt does _not_ shed that much.”

Spark's raichu shed more than a furfou growing its summer coat, but that wasn't a debate they needed to rehash right now.

“I don't know what to tell you,” Candela said instead. “There's nothing going on in my apartment. No weird noises or…”

Wait a minute. Candela blinked at the early-morning darkness around her, the warmth of her blankets giving way to a sudden chill. 

Wasn't her apartment apartment normally noisier than this? The pipes always rattled, the radiator hummed, the walls and floors groaned and creaked in the night. Come to think of it, it was normally much lighter than this too, even this early: she couldn't see the normal glow from the streetlights outside or the green pinprick light of the fire alarm above her doorway. It was like a blanket of stillness wrapped around her, heavy and thick.

“Hold on a moment,” Candela said.

She ran her fingers through her flareon's fur. He looked back up at her in return, teeth bared in the beginnings of a snarl and ears pressed flat against his head. He'd realized something was wrong too, perhaps even before she had.

“Okay, Rusty,” she said. “Use flash.”

His fur blazed with light and heat, setting the room aglow throwing back the shadows around them both. Candela had a split-second impression of _something there_ , twirling smog and bright white eyes and mouths bared into cruel grins, before a gleeful laugh echoed through the room and the presence— _presences_ —oozed backwards into the walls.

“Augh!” Candela shrieked and very nearly dropped the phone.

“What?” Spark demanded from the other end of the line. “What's going on?”

A moment to catch her breath, to scoop up Rusty and her poké balls, and then she was fine again. _No time to worry, just get moving._ There was a problem, Candela was a gym leader, there was a problem: ergo, she would be the one to solve it.

“Spark,” she snapped out, “call up Blanche right now and get them out of their place, I don't care what you have to tell them. Then get Professor Willow on the line and tell him we're all going to need Silph Scopes right away—doesn't matter what strings he has to pull to get them. Probably extra great balls, too.”

“Okay,” Spark said immediately, and Candela's heart melted just that little bit; he was ridiculous and reckless and so very wonderful when you needed someone to take action _now_. “Are you going to be okay, though? What's going on?”

“I'll be fine. Nothing I can't handle—just startled me a bit, is all.” Candela snorted. “You're lucky you only got meowth. My house is _haunted_.”

“Oh.” She could practically hear Spark's wince from the other end of the line—a ghost-type infestation was a nightmare, even for experienced trainers.

A crash and an eerie laugh rang out from the living room, and Candela swore quietly. “Gotta go, okay? Make sure you take care of things on your end.”

“No problem,” Spark promised. “Blanche and I will meet you and your place as soon as we can. Stay safe.”

“I always do,” Candela started to say, but he'd hung up before she could even get the words out. She stared at the phone for a moment before laughing to herself. Spark never did waste even a moment.

“All right, Rusty,” she said. Her flareon hopped from her arms to the floor, taking up his position at her side. She scooped as many free poké balls as she had into arms, and strapped her party's belt across her waist. “You ready?”

He growled an affirmative, fur flickering with the flames inside him.

Candela smiled. Time to catch some ghosts.

–

By the time Spark and Blanche showed up forty-five minutes later, Candela had captured twenty-three gastly, made a forever enemy of a particularly annoying gengar, and destroyed most of the furniture in her house. (She really hoped trainer's insurance would cover this one, because she had been fond of that coffee table.)

Spark made his appearance known by slamming through the door in a blinding shower of light and static electricity and stray white hairs. “Candela!”

“Ow,” she said pointedly, blinking fuzzy black dots out of her eyes.

“Ah…sorry.” He scratched at the back of his head, embarrassed. “I'm, uh, glad you're alive, though?”

Blanche followed in a moment later, vaporeon on their shoulders, looking as perfectly pristine as ever despite it being barely four in the morning. “A gastly horde wouldn't have been enough to defeat Candela.”

“Thank you!” Candela said, sticking her tongue out at Spark just for show. “Someone believes in me.”

Her glee was ruined a moment later when Blanche raised an eyebrow and added, “although maybe we should be worried about the apartment coming down around us.”

“Oh wow,” Spark said, looking around at his surroundings for the first time. “Wow, Candela, what did you do? My place is all covered in white fur and it _still_ doesn't look half as bad as this.”

“Look, it's not like it's _easy_ fighting pokémon that are barely corporeal half the time! We've been doing the best we can.” At her side, Rusty lowered his ears piteously, turning the full force of his dark eyes on the other two humans in the room. “Did you get the Silph Scopes?”

“Oh, yeah!” Spark nodded and pulled three pairs of goggles out of his backpack. “And Professor Willow says he'll give us extra candy for anything from the hordes we catch—I guess he really wants to figure out what's behind this.”

That wasn't a good sign, although the extra candy was _certainly_ a nice consolation prize. “Does that mean it's happening other places too?”

Blanche nodded. “At least five or six points, he thinks.” They smiled, gracefully and—to anyone who knew Blanche—mischievously. “My place was invaded by drowzee. I was having a wonderful night's sleep before Spark woke me up.”

“…You _jerk_ ,” Candela whined. Spark got angry furballs, Candela got furniture-smashing ghosts, and Blanche got the nightmare-eating walking sleep aids. She didn't know why she'd expected any different, really. 

Spark strapped his goggles on, buckling them around the back of his head, and Candela quickly followed suit. The Silph Scope lit the world in shades of blue and green, outlining the forms of the ghost hidden in the walls or the floor or right in plain sight.

“Looks like… nine left?” he asked. 

Candela nodded an assent, and Blanche followed suit a moment after. (Somehow, even the Silph Scope's giant goofy lenses managed to look good on Blanche. The world really wasn't fair, and Candela probably would have minded it more if she didn't enjoy looking at Blanche so much.)

“Three for each,” she said.

Blanche smiled. “That's assuming we all pull the same weight. Ten pidgey candy says I catch the most.”

“Pidgey candy?” Spark laughed. “Come on, that's barely a bet! Make it ten scyther candy and you're on.”

They paused a moment, thinking, then nodded. “I'll take that bet.”

“Count me in, then.” Candela pulled a fresh poké ball off her belt, and Rusty bristled with renewed energy. “But I hope you're both ready to pay up!”

“We'll see,” Blanche said, the quiet of their voice betrayed by the excitement burning in their eyes.

And then there was nothing more to be said: it was just the three of them and their pokémon, weaving between destroyed furniture, dodging ghostly attacks, moving with a grace borne of being completely familiar with each other's movements.

Candela smiled as adrenaline rushed through her veins. Sure, her life was constant chaos. Sure, getting a proper night's sleep occasionally would be nice. There still was nothing she loved more than leading Valor, stampedes and rampaging pokémon and all.

She wouldn't trade these two for the world.


End file.
